


Family

by yoolee



Category: Samurai Love Ballad: PARTY
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Child Death, Death, stream of consciousness SORT OF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-29 03:08:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12621792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoolee/pseuds/yoolee
Summary: It's his family too, and he doesn't have much of it left. Sasuke perspective angst.





	Family

**Author's Note:**

> I just needed to get this out so I can be done with it and get on with my life. This is trite, crappy, vague, rushed, lazy and PRETENTIOUS AS FUCK (Faulkner, I am not). SO. Yeah. MANY MANY THANKS TO han-pan for culling commas editing and helping me work through some gnarly awkward parts.
> 
> I feel weird writing about this, but a) it’s fanfic b) it’s fanfic of a game set in a historical time period where, miserably, it wouldn’t have been all that uncommon. Still:
> 
> WARNINGS FOR: Major character death, death of child, death of animals, murder, and explicit violence.

Sometimes, Sasuke still hears him laugh–a low rumble, thick with melted mirth.

It’s the kind of laugh that can fill a hall all by itself and often did. The kind that inspires men, even at the last. It shouldn’t have been the last. Not from Lord Shingen. But it is; he laughs, low and lovely and forlorn and the shot rings out, a ringing crack that sends Momofuku flying from her perch. Sasuke is  _there,_ frozen in the branches in a world that’s suddenly silent except for a laugh until the shot ends it, and his hands forget how to be quiet, scrambling down the tree, scraping his knees bloody on the bark as he lands too hard and too fast and too late, and his Sensei is there, blocking the way with a silent, inscrutable stare.

_No._

He doesn’t say it, but Sasuke hears it all the same, and protests.

“But—”

“Stay here.” A whisper of words, firmly inarguable.

Sasuke wavers and doesn’t cry because ninjas don’t. His shoulders shake. He’s suddenly too tired, too sad, to push past. He doesn’t need to see, he already knows and he remembers what death looks like. When he gets used to being sad, anger settles on its heels. He’s never had much family, he’s not supposed to have any, but he does and they took one away from him.

He stays.

(A low laugh, lost to the trees and lost to time, echoes in his ears.)

–

Not the trees this time, but the rafters. The rafters are bad because smoke rises and it’s harder to breathe. He hears the cracking of guns, distant at the gates, the pound of hooves and shouts of men and now he’s angry. They’re trying to take everything away – all of his family. He isn’t supposed to  _have_ family, but he does and it’s his. Below him, a new mother holds her child tight, brushing back tufts of red hair as a tremulous wail rises with the smoke. It’s a register that makes his skin prickle with irritation. Ninjas don’t cry – but Sasuke’s the only ninja here so he holds his tongue, and then schools his ears to find other sounds. Outside beyond the gates Lord Yukimura yells, a rallying, ferocious cry, pushing back against the siege.

Sasuke answers it. Or tries to. He grips his shuriken and drops from the rafters to slip to the door but his way is blocked with the sudden appearance of a silent hand firm on his shoulder, saying without words,  _No._

“But Sensei—”

Sasuke’s mouth snap shut at the look, eyes like sharp behind a bloodied mask. Saizo’s only there for a moment, pressing something into the mother’s hands, but he spares a stare for his young pupil before vanishing after the cry at the gates, leaving a low murmur behind. “Stay here.”

He’s old enough to listen. Old enough to know that he should listen. But… this time it isn’t too late. This time he can  _do_  something. It’s his family too. It’s his family too and he doesn’t have much of it.

“Sasuke?” He feels the brush of fingers, gentle and soft against his arm, and meets the worried, determined eyes of the woman left behind. The infant against her chest screams and Sasuke shrugs her hand off and follows Saizo into the fray.

(A haunting howl echoes after him, high-pitched and unhappy, from its mother’s arms)

Sensei might be mad but he won’t be for long. Sasuke wishes he knew how to do that, the not-being-mad. He wants to not be angry, not be sad.  There are arrows so he tells Momofuku not to fly, to stay close.

He smells metal and smoke and blood in the air, and for a moment he doesn’t think about anything else, he’s just there.

Then he sees them. They’re magnetic, vital. Wholly in sync. It reminds Sasuke of weighted scales, moving in absolute precision with one another. Saizo darts, ducks, and Yukimura swings through the space. Yukimura steps and Saizo flows in his shadow. Red and blue, weaving, turning, twisting, moving, where one of them  _is_  the other is defending, back to front, front to back. Red and blue, blue and red. Yukimura blocks the arc of a sword before it touches Saizo’s neck, Saizo returns the favor in a red slash at a rearing horse’s chest. The creature goes down and its rider is next. Blue and red, red and blue.

Sasuke darts, and works his way closer. Cacophony and confusion, a clash of chaos, but Sensei taught him how to use that, to slip between and around and through, unnoticed. He tries to ignore the people in his path, between him and the family he has left. They’re nobody, nothing, faceless figures behind ragtag helmets.

He can tell the difference, between their side and the other. Desperation reeks from the sweat of the soldiers on their side. When they followed Shingen they were sure, they stood on even ground. They’re not sure now. Now they’re shaking hands and tired shouts. It makes Sasuke  _angry_. He’s not supposed to be angry, so he tries to ignore it. He doesn’t hear the yells, or the cries, he’s not  _listening_.  Not to them, not to  _no_. There’s a roar in his ears that sounds like the crack of a shot fired in darkened woods.

He’s finally near enough to see them up close; a commander in red and his shadow in blue. He cantell from watching them his whole life that they’re breathing hard.  _Tired_. Still, watching them is better than the watching sagging soldiers, and he feels the anger loosen in his chest, just enough to remember how to ignore it. No glances shared, no whispered words. Two men on foot, surrounded by riders, they nonetheless move forward,  _forward_ , fluid, together, blue and red, red and blue, and around him desperation of the soldiers turns to haggard hope. Sasuke’s own hands feel a little faster as he ducks around swords and pounding hooves, and works his way closer, closer, to red and blue and blue and red. He thinks they’ll push through, and he  _forgets_ about the arrows–Momofuku lifts from his shoulder at his request.

(It’s his fight too. It’s his family and he wants to  _help_.)

He hears hooves but he’s watching Yukimura and Saizo. Forward, fluid, together until, in an endless stretch of seconds that Sasuke  _sees_  but doesn’t understand, they’re  _not_. Blue and red, red and—

He hears an echo of  _No_ , raw from a throat that’s always calm, ragged from a long fight and not enough air.

Two hands, wrapped in black that end in blue that should be next to red, shove him hard when the hooves are too close, and they hit  _blue_ instead of  _him_. No breath to yell, the wind is knocked free from his lungs with the sock to his chest and Sasuke hits the ground too hard and  _rolls_ but he can’t  _breathe_ —a horse screams too close,  _too close,_  looming huge above him but its hooves are mangled in blue and silver and dripping red, red and…Sasuke can’t breathe so he can’t cry out. The rider falls off, sword in his throat, but Sasuke doesn’t see,  _doesn’t want to see_ , as the horse falls too he’s watching trampled blue dripping red and—

Yukimura turns, blue eyes bright and for a moment, surprised.

Of course he’s surprised. There should have been blades there, blocking the one swinging without deterrent but there aren’t. One is in the throat of a falling rider, the other in the flank of a falling horse, loosed from a hand that’s not a  _hand_ anymore thanks to  _hooves_. His own hand hits a shattered mask and he can’t shout, can’t breathe. Yukimura’s spear lifts but is too late; Sasuke lunges,  _too late_ , too slow, and he can’t  _breathe_ and the sword that should have been blocked but isn’t, swings true and there’s no blue, it’s  _red_ , red—

Sasuke’s eyes squeeze shut; he doesn’t want to see. He doesn’t need to see, he already knows, and he remembers what death looks like.

He can breathe again, but it aches in his throat. There’s something heavy on top of him, his head hurts, his chest hurts. There’s still shouting, still crashing of metal and the whoosh of loosed arrows, the crack of gunfire. But he can only hear a blade hitting flesh and horses hooves not hitting the ground, hitting something else, something that was whole and now it isn’t, that should have been somewhere else and wasn’t. He needs to listen, he didn’t listen and he didn’t hear but he has to listen now. He’s still here and there’s no one left to lead  _forward_ , no fluidity, no balance.

He sucks in a breath that’s mostly smoke, and wriggles free from under the flank. There’s a sword in its side and he reaches for the handle because of whose it was, then recoils when he sees the handle has snapped off.  “Sensei?” It’s more a croak than sound. He doesn’t mean to ask, he doesn’t, he doesn’t mean to ask but it bubbles from his throat in a creak. “Lord Yukimura?”

There’s no answer and he stumbles to his feet, trying not to stare but it’s hard. He knows what he’s seeing but it can’t seem to get past his eyes before he rejects it with a shudder. He knows what death looks like–he knows, knows but he’s forgotten, and a shrill whisper shields his thoughts; it’s not what he thinks.  They’re not bodies, just shapes. Just shapes but they’re wrong somehow. He doesn’t seem to remember how to blink and the shapes he’s seeing don’t match what he knows they are. They’re not what they’re supposed to be. They don’t look right. The shapes are shattered and crushed and they don’t add up, they don’t match, they’re not together. He can’t  _remember_ how to blink but the longer he stares the more he knows. They’re not right. Not right, not right, they’re wrong.

There’s a second sword, a second blade, but it’s not where it’s supposed to be. He thinks somewhere distant and tinny in his mind that it doesn’t make sense, that it’s supposed to be somewhere else, in a hand–but it’s not a hand anymore, that’s one of the shapes that doesn’t  _make sense_ but his mind wipes the thought clean and he thinks he ought to blink but he doesn’t. Blindly he pulls the second blade free of the throat it found and fights the urge to retch at the scent, putrid and familiar but suddenly too close and the dark, congealed globs the movement wedges free. The scent doesn’t bother him. It doesn’t. Or it didn’t, but the blood just reminds him of–

The movement catches the eyes of straggling soldiers and his feet remember how to run and he does, towards the fray, towards the gates, towards the castle, through legs and past arrows and the small, cold pile of feathers they found, silent now as a shattered white mask turned red, red– _it’s his family too and he doesn’t have much of it._

He slips in, but he didn’t have to; they’d already broken the gate. He follows a screaming wail, high-pitched, and prays it’s mother’s arms are still safe.

When he flings the last door free the two that should have been there aren’t and he’s too late, he’s too late and he’s not fast enough– _never fast enough_ –the kaiken Saizo handed her is knocked free, Sasuke’s shuriken flies, but before it  _hits_  the arm lifts and falls once.  _Too late–!_

Twice.

A wailing cry chokes short and his family is gone.

 


End file.
